School counselors connect

New state program aimed at helping them be more successful

By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 27, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Brian Lehmann / The Rocky

George Washington High School counselor Lindsey Vesceri works with Kourtney Griffie, 17, and Symona Ruffin, 16, right, on choosing courses for next year.

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Amanda Prince had a tough time in middle school. Without elaborating, the 16-year-old Denverite said there was "a lot of drama."

But she's regained her interest in learning, in part because of help from Cori Canty, her counselor at Kepner Middle School.

Today, the young woman who favors bright purple nail polish attends Denver's Career Education Center - a magnet public school she learned about from Canty.

She can take free courses at Community College of Denver through the school. Now, she has her sights on a career in fashion design or merchandising.

"I'm not complaining," Amanda said, in a moment of understatement.

The student-to-counselor ratio in Colorado has improved in recent years and is better than the national average. Still, the American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students per counselor. In Colorado, it was 411-to-1, the group says, based on 2006-07 data.

A new $15 million state grant is expected to boost the number of school counselors at 92 middle and high schools across Colorado, although it's too early to say by how many. The grant also will transform the way counseling is offered.

The three-year School Counselor Corps program, signed into law last year by Gov. Bill Ritter, is meant to install a targeted approach that addresses students' academic, career, personal and social needs. Participating schools must develop goals, measure impact and tweak programs that fall short of the mark.

"We want to change the culture of a school and how it's preparing kids for postsecondary success," said Assistant Education Commissioner Jeanette Cornier.

A cornerstone of the program is boosting the number of students who go to college.

Forty-seven percent of high school graduates from lower-income Colorado families immediately enroll in college or trade school, compared with 82 percent of students from higher-income families. Studies have confirmed a link between counseling services and a desire to apply to college, state officials say.

A counselor's job description hasn't always been clear, and over the years, the emphasis has changed.

"It started off as a career (focus), then shifted to therapy almost, then rode the wave to being all about getting kids to college," said Canty, 39, who oversees counseling services for all Denver Public Schools. "Now, we have to do it all."

Still, counseling staffs are easy targets for budget cuts. Canty said there were 24 middle school counselors in Denver in 2003, but only three last year. Now, there are seven.

The new state program, plus a federal grant and a push by DPS to get more students to fill out college applications and apply for scholarships, have resulted in the number of counselors growing from 58 last year to 72 this year, Canty said.

Denver is receiving $1.9 million from the state over three years to enhance counseling at nine middle and high schools.

Canty said that when she began working as a counselor at Kepner in 2000 she was mainly handling discipline. She persuaded administrators to let her try a more proactive approach.

She started with seventh-grade boys whose grades "weren't cutting it." She learned that some didn't have enough family support; others had experienced deaths in their families.

She began meeting with them once a week. They talked about what was happening in their lives and how to deal with stress. She watched their grades improve. But when the group disbanded, their grades "slowly started dropping again."

"This showed me that I needed to tweak my curriculum in order for these strategies to stick with the boys," Canty said.

Canty gets daily reminders of the impact her work has had on students. She also keeps a folder of every thank you note.

One is most memorable. A student wrote that she had been pondering suicide when she began working with Canty. The note ended with, "but I'm still here."

poppenj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5176

Denver schools receiving funding

* Grant Ranch K-8

* Skinner Middle School

* Contemporary Learning Academy High School

* George Washington High School

* Martin Luther King Early College

* North High School

* Thomas Jefferson High School

* West High School

* Place Bridge Academy ECE-8

IN HIS OWN WORDS

Andy Winn, 32, started as a counselor at George Washington High School this school year thanks to a new state grant program.

"One of the greatest gifts this career gives to me every single day is to see a kid succeed, to see a kid take ownership of their personal responsibility.

"There is a huge volume of information. I had a professor tell me, 'You'll be there for eight years and you still won't know everything.' It's overwhelming at times. How much I've learned is incredible.

"We don't have a lot of shared duties. We are not asked to do other stuff. Earlier this year I worked with 32 kids who were failing. I did an academic support plan with each kid. Sixty percent of the kids I worked with improved. Fifty percent went from two or three F's to zero F's. I'm really excited about that."

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